


The Man in the Mirror (or: Persona Non Drama)

by Vivian Moon (vivian_moon)



Category: Colbert Report FPF, Fake News FPF, Fake News RPF, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (TV)
Genre: Alternate Reality Duplicates, Friendship, M/M, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7924939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivian_moon/pseuds/Vivian%20Moon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of two Stephens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man in the Mirror (or: Persona Non Drama)

**Author's Note:**

> Like everybody else, I loved the glimpse of Jon and "Stephen" in their retirement cabin that we got on the Late Show. Unlike everybody else, I promptly started plotting weird reality-hopping friendship fic as backstory for how Late Show Stephen was able to visit it. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction set within the world of the Colbert Report TV show, and any names shared by real people refer to their fictionalised TV counterparts. Depictions in this story are not intended to represent anyone's genuine opinions or real-life actions.

The portal to Other Stephen's world was in Stephen's closet. Other Stephen always seemed to find this hilarious, though he could never quite explain why. (Of course, Other Stephen came from a world where it was apparently normal to laugh instead of applaud at important points on the Report, so maybe all that giggling about coming out of the closet just meant he thought it was impressive.)

They hadn't always had a portal. To begin with, Other Stephen was just a voice in his head. Stephen had always had plenty of those, and gotten pretty good at shutting them out when he wanted to, so he didn't think much about it at first.

The two of them met for the first time in the dressing room on the night of Stephen's first Report. He'd insisted on a full-length mirror on the closet door so he could get dressed in front of it: couldn't let the Nation down with a suit that was any less than perfect. No one wants their wholesome Truthwich coming from a man who's dressed like a hobo.

He'd been suspicious of mirrors ever since the one back home tried to lie that he had a grey chest hair, so he could tell at once that the Stephen on the other side of this one was watching him. Oh, he was mimicking Stephen's movements perfectly - _too_ perfectly, as if he was studying him in preparation for some sinister plot to assassinate him and take his place to co-opt the adulation of the Nation. Stephen gave him a stern warning eyebrow, but Other Stephen just returned the expression. He quickly switched to the other brow to fox him, but Other Stephen matched him just as fast.

Truly a formidable opponent.

It was halfway through the show before he realised Other Stephen had performed a sneaky mind-meld sometime during the encounter through the mirror. To begin with he'd just assumed that the echo in his head was some kind of equipment malfunction. (And never mind the "tech boys" trying to tell him that it couldn't be his earpiece if he didn't have it in his ear. Damned TV industry liberals and their mollycoddling of the handicapable - just because he couldn't wear an earpiece with only one good ear didn't mean he couldn't pull himself up by the bootstraps and choose to hear the signal anyway. How else did they explain that voice he kept hearing that whispered all that gay filth?)

But Other Stephen's voice wasn't a perfect echo - sometimes he would falter and fall briefly out of sync. It seemed like he'd almost laugh and lose the rhythm before he got himself back on track. (This made a lot more sense after Stephen worked out that thing about laughter as applause. It seemed Other Stephen was tuning in to Stephen Prime's broadcasts, piggybacking off his work to spread the message to his own Nation. Obviously sometimes he would be so overcome by Stephen's brilliance that he just couldn't help himself.)

After that first show, he'd planned to give Other Stephen a good stern talking-to in the mirror - Stephen Colbert didn't give handouts, even to alternate universe versions of himself. Get your own truth, freeloaders! This one's his. But Other Stephen managed to disarm him by pointing at the mirror before he got the chance. "You, sir, killed out there tonight," he said. "And not just with the sharpness of this suit, although, boy, you could exfoliate with this thing."

Hard to argue, hard to argue. Nonetheless, Stephen was bracing himself for a blistering rejoinder when they were interrupted by a knock on the dressing room door.

Not _his_ dressing room door, naturally. No one would dare. But Other Stephen clearly hadn't cultivated the same aura of healthy fear in his underlings (rookie mistake: get in there early and fire an intern or two just to set the tone or else they'd be all over for you demanding health insurance and other ridiculous things) and there was a weird doubling sensation of being in two places at once as he went to get the door while Stephen and his reflection stayed right where they were. Fortunately, Stephen was well prepared, thanks to all those years he'd spent rehearsing for the day they had him cloned so he could give the Nation some hot and steamy three-way truth action.

He couldn't see or hear the person Other Stephen was interacting with, but he could tell that it was Jon. (All right, the part where Other Stephen said, "Jon!" was a small clue, but his gut would have gotten him there anyway.) And he felt it when the two of them embraced, a phantom cuddly warmth that made him sigh.

(With disappointment. At Other Stephen's disgraceful lack of manly decorum. Nothing else.)

_His_ Jon knew better than to try to hug him, and he liked it that way. No one wanted to spend all day with their clothes smelling of that very specific blend of coffee and newsprint and old smoke and liberal Jewish sweat that Jon smelled like when Stephen got close enough to breathe him in. Which was completely unavoidable in an office environment sometimes. Even if he did have to have his driver take him across the street to the other studio to do it now.

Other Stephen kept laughing and talking, but his voice was growing fainter, and Stephen felt his presence peel away as he and Other Jon continued off along the hallway. Stephen definitely didn't miss him. It wasn't as if he'd had any first-night nerves that might have been assuaged by having another voice there whispering his lines along with him, or that he'd wanted any company to celebrate his success before he went home to his lonely empty bed.

Wait, his lonely marriage bed. Which wasn't lonely because it had his wife in it.

On second thoughts, maybe he'd just stay at the studio and have his own private celebration with a bottle of whiskey.

#

Other Stephen was there with him for every Report after that. He usually showed up in Stephen's head when they were both dressing in front of the mirror, but how long he lingered afterwards varied. At first they found it hard to disentangle; Stephen was, naturally, the dominant personality, and Other Stephen kept on thinking and talking like him while they were linked up. One time Other Stephen even got yelled at for bringing Stephen home with him.

(Stephen hadn't liked it there anyway. He could feel Other Stephen _glow_ when he was with his family, a sense of warmth and belonging that made Stephen feel all itchy and wrong inside his skin, like his own family was a badly tailored suit and everyone was laughing at him because they could see that it didn't fit, that he was the wrong shape. In that one moment, he hated Other Stephen more fiercely than any other time before or after.)

But after the yelling, Other Stephen started to get better at closing down their link after the show. They would both undress together, in front of the mirror: it was actually kind of hot. (Because he could see what other people saw when they looked at him. Admiring your own body wasn't gay.) But then Other Stephen would put on drab, unstylish clothes and drive himself back home like he was some kind of peasant, and then the connection would break because Stephen couldn't see himself at all in that kind of mystifying behaviour.

So they came to a mostly peaceful coexistence, especially once he realised he could exploit Other Stephen for the show, in the grand American tradition of using immigrant labour to produce cheap imitation knock-offs. Naturally he couldn't trust Other Stephen to carry a whole Report by himself - what if he _giggled_? - but he could use him as somebody to argue against. After all, it was the only way to get the audience to believe that there was a _tiny_ chance that Stephen might not nail his opponent.

Although he always did. Obviously. Let it never be said that Stephen Colbert wasn't prepared to forcefully nail any man who gave him lip.

So theirs was a relationship of give and take, in that Stephen gave, and Other Stephen took. After all, he wasn't going to let Other Stephen's thoughts influence _him_. Nobody came in through Stephen's back door!

But sometimes he couldn't help but have the dark suspicion that Other Stephen's thoughts might be _leaking_. After all, how else could you explain the unnatural, outright sinful thoughts that sometimes crossed his mind? Like that time when he'd seen a picture of two elderly men lining up to get gay married and thought they actually looked sort of adorable. Or that late night in the office when he was watching over Jon's shoulder to make sure the words he wrote were suitably acceptable, and somebody who definitely had to have been Other Stephen started to imagine what it would be like to press his lips to the back of Jon's neck where those tiny little kinky grey curls grew.

As for that thing about Tad's abs and the chocolate syrup, well, he just hoped Other Stephen had felt every one of those cold showers that he'd had to take that week.

(Sometimes when he was drunk and pissed and sure that Other Stephen was the source of all those _thoughts_ that didn't belong in his head, he would go down to the mirror in the middle of the night and point at Other Stephen and declare, "You're gay!" But Other Stephen would always just point right back at him and mouth, " _You're_ gay." And then Stephen got so mad he didn't know what to do except store it all up until it crunched down into diamond-hard truth bullets he could fire at the forces of the gay agenda on the next Report.)

That was their pattern for a long time - but then came the days of the writers' strike. Stephen had been slightly appalled to learn those tambourine-shaking hippies up on the fourth floor were actually involved in the process of creating his show, and even more appalled they'd been allowed to stop.

Unions! Everybody knew that the United States was already the most perfect union that anyone could be in. There was no need to go getting greedy by joining another one on top of that. That kind of thing only led to terrible mistakes, like workers' rights. What about Stephen's right to have his words appear on the screen in front of him so he didn't have to think them before he said them? Ideas should come direct from the gut, without having to pass through the brain. He'd seen pictures of those things - they were like mazes of crinkly folds. No wonder people who thought with their brains got lost trying to follow the straightforwardness of his gut logic.

Without having his words prepared for him, he came dangerously close to having to use his own brain to fill the length of a show, so naturally he leapt for the most readily available alternative - using Other Stephen's. Whenever there was the threat of yawning silence (and there must never, ever, ever be a silence; silence meant you didn't have an opinion, and if you didn't have an opinion, how did you know you were right?) they would borrow from each other to keep filling the dead air.

It was the first time they'd properly _talked_ , outside of the Formidable Opponent debates. (Which weren't really talking. Letting your opponent control the debate by expecting you to counter his points was almost as bad as letting him change your mind! That was why it was important to always give the right answers, regardless of whether he asked the right questions.) And after that, Stephen found it was increasingly easy to open a channel to Other Stephen when he needed somebody to answer him right now and nobody else was around.

He found out that Other Stephen was good for taking memos about things Stephen wanted to include in their next show, but less good for answering questions like, "Where the hell is Bobby?", "Why isn't Papa Bear returning my calls?" and, "Who drank all my whiskey, stole my pants, and left me on the floor of my office with a pink feather boa and a note from somebody named Paulo who had a great time last night?"

(Other Stephen told him to call Paulo back, which was _terrible_ advice. The credit card charge for calling that phone line was ridiculous. And all those hot single men in his area it connected him with said such filthy things he had to phone back three more times just to be sure he hadn't been hearing things.)

A year or so later they both went out to Iraq. (Turned out they still had troops out there. Who knew? He could have sworn he'd seen a Mission Accomplished banner about here someplace.) Stephen was of course completely fearless in the face of danger that he was being well financially compensated to face, so he knew exactly who to blame for the wobbly stomach he experienced on the plane.

_This is terrifying_ , he heard Other Stephen think, which was a frankly shocking thing for a man to admit, except in the excusable cases of bears, sharks, eagle-sharks, eagle-bears, shark-bears, shark-bear-eagles (shbeagles? They even sounded Jewish. _Another reason to be suspicious_ ) and poor people being allowed to vote for things. Clearly Other Stephen needed Stephen to take him firmly in hand.

(Not like that. Even if it would technically only be masturbation, which was still a sin, but one of those little ones that everyone did, like lying and coveting and murdering hobos. But either way, it wasn't something he should be thinking about onboard an airplane full of military personnel. Also like murdering hobos.)

...Other Stephen was giggling at him. Silently, which was a lot like being tickled on the inside of his head. He squirmed and barely swallowed a blurt of inappropriate giggles himself. No, no. Fight it! Be stern, be courageous. Adopt a photogenic pose that's tough and manly yet also subtly hints at inner sensitivity. He tested several potential hand positions - no, too camp; too sassy; too jazz hands; ah, perfect - as he raised his chin and gazed wistfully out of the window.

Which admittedly meant he was staring up at nothing in particular, but these sacrifices had to be made. Clearly, he was going to have to lead Other Stephen by heroic example so he didn't fall apart and show his weakness.

_Thank you,_ Other Stephen thought, the flavour of his thoughts still warm with laughter. _I feel much better already._ Stephen puffed up a little. By the time they both stepped off of this plane in Iraq, he was sure he would have taught Other Stephen to be fearless. After all, he was an expert at Not Being Scared.

He practised it every single day.

#

His pep talk obviously worked, since Other Stephen didn't embarrass himself, and neither did Stephen. (Not that he'd been worried.) He even bore up through losing his hair, oh, God, his beautiful hair, what had he done? It was too hot to sleep comfortably that night, and yet his head felt cold. He was _fuzzy_ , like a teddybear.

And now he was wishing that he hadn't had that thought, because he was wondering if there were bears in the Iraqi desert. There could be. There could be anything out there. Everybody knew that once you went outside of the United States or certain parts of Europe with wine or good skiing, it might as well all be marked Here Be Dragons. There could be giant sand bears with terrible long claws about to _rip_ the edges of the tent open...

He shivered. Had he thought it was hot in here? No, it was cold, cold, cold. He wished he had his wife beside him in bed. After all, she was fatter than him, so the bears would eat her first. But no, he was alone.

Stephen thought about going outside to ask one of the soldiers if he could borrow one of their machine guns. He hadn't even been allowed to bring Sweetness with him, which was wildly unfair; he'd have to spend weeks cleaning her and taking her to the firing range before she forgave him for going to a warzone without her, no matter how many times he tried to explain that it hadn't been his choice.

But then he had a terrible thought: what if the soldiers had already been eaten by the bears? What if they'd been _replaced_ by bears, specially trained terrorist bears with explosives strapped to their backs?

Stephen trembled in his bed, and tried to pretend he was just back at theatre camp. That hadn't been so bad - he'd fallen in with Buddy Cole, who could pick out the gays that infested that camp from a mile off, and had made sure that the two of them would only be sharing a cabin with others of their own kind. Stephen had never been short of company in the night when he was at camp: the midnight wrestling, the games of "how many people can you squeeze into one bunk?", the massage techniques Buddy had taught him to help him sleep. (Who knew the butt muscles were such a gateway to blissful nights?)

But there was no one here to give him a friendly heterosexual butt massage tonight. Although he supposed that he wasn't completely alone. He opened up that mental door and shouted a warning through it. _Bears!_

Other Stephen came awake rather quickly after that.

(Stephen sometimes suspected that Other Stephen harboured a few unAmerican ideas - for instance, he didn't seem to understand that yelling at your staff made them more productive, or that benefits just sent the cruel message that you didn't believe they were good enough to earn things on their own - but at least he understood completely about bears.)

_I didn't want you to be scared_ , Stephen explained. Technically, he knew from his parents that the correct procedure for fear of bears in the night was to yell that boys who were big enough to open the bedroom door by themselves were big enough to check the yard for bears without running to Mommy and Daddy, but he figured that allowances had to be made for the fact that Other Stephen's parents hadn't brought him up properly. (They hadn't even taught him the difference between baby crying and having something real to cry about, or locked him down in the basement to cure him of being scared of the dark. No wonder he didn't know how to be brave like Stephen did.)

_I know what will keep the bears away,_ Other Stephen said. A moment later, he started to hum the national anthem. It was a weird sensation, having someone else humming along with him inside his head, but it was also kind of nice - like having someone with him in the bed, wrapped around and pressed up close where he could feel the vibrations. A manly-voiced, masculine sort of someone...

He was asleep before they made it to, "Play ball!"

#

When Stephen returned to the studio after Iraq, Other Stephen was waiting for him in the dressing room.

Stephen had arrived at work early, since he'd built up a good steam of anger ready to boil up some distilled truth after his inadequate reception at the airport. All right, Tad _had_ organised the marching band, but it was only a high school band. And there hadn't been nearly enough banners - was he the only one who understood what "as far as the eye can see" meant? Because when he had his glasses on he could see pretty damn far. And what about his eagles? He'd specifically demanded a display team of trained eagles to fly across the field of patriotic fireworks. (No, Tad, a plush eagle was _not_ an adequate substitute. Also, no, Tad, just because he'd disgustedly rejected it didn't mean it was okay to ask for it back.)

Oh, yeah, and his wife and kids had been there. But John Paul had ended whining because Stephen wouldn't let him have the toy eagle, and then his wife had been pissed at him for telling John Paul he could buy his own toys when he was old enough to get a job - seven was old enough to have to hear the hard truths! - and goddammit, could he not have _one thing_ for himself around here?

So there were lots of reasons why he'd been dissatisfied with the scene that greeted him on his triumphant return, and none of them had anything to do with the fact that _his_ Jon hadn't come up to him to run a hand over his buzzcut the way that Other Stephen's Jon had done. His Jon had just hovered on the sidelines and given him a hesitant smile, which was good - proof that Stephen had managed to teach him not to go trying any funny stuff.

(Except maybe it would have been nice to be _asked_ , just so he could say no. It was completely unfair of Jon to keep all his perverted desires on the inside where Stephen had to do all the work of imagining them. Even if he was getting quite good at it by now.)

To cap it off, his wife had insisted on celebrating his return with welcome back sex, because of course even though it was his heroic triumph they had to do something that _she_ liked. Anyway, it hadn't been his fault, he was _tired_ , Lorraine, and how was he supposed to get in the mood when she insisted on wearing that terrible perfume? And he still didn't understand what she'd taken so badly about his perfectly reasonable suggestion that she cover it up with some of his aftershave and cologne and turn the lights out. Women were so oversensitive.

So all in all, it had been a pretty damn unsatisfying weekend for a returning hero, and he'd stormed into the dressing room at work to spend some alone time with his pre-show rituals - and instead found that he was sharing the room with himself.

But not quite himself. Other Stephen was more casually dressed than Stephen would usually be to leave the house, especially on a Report day: khakis and a polo shirt, without even a tie. He wore different glasses, with thicker, darker frames, and there might have been a slight hint of grey around his temples, though it was hard to tell with his hair buzzed as short as Stephen's. Stephen was sure that he was slimmer too: he didn't look nearly as fat as Stephen felt whenever he looked in the mirror, and although he had the wonky ear it wasn't half such a hideous mutation as Stephen's own appeared.

He was also, naturally, extremely handsome and charming, and really, who could blame Stephen for being a little bit aflutter at being face to face with the person he admired most in all the world?

Though of course there was no need to let him see it. Play it cool, Stephen. No fawning... Wow, didn't they have lovely hands? It was almost enough to make him think that he should start tipping his manicurist.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded. "No one's allowed in my dressing room before the show." Apart from Tad, occasionally, but hey, he was the building manager, and since both furniture and things falling apart came under his department, it followed that it was his job to deal with Stephen's wardrobe malfunctions. However much he tried to argue his way out of his responsibilities.

"I felt like you were easier to reach all of a sudden," Stephen said. The shrug was easy, unstudied, yet somehow also graceful, and that smile... well, Stephen could see why they both had legions of adoring fans. He fought the urge to give a dreamy sigh. "So I had a look behind the mirror, and, well, there you were."

"I knew it!" Stephen said. Of course, everyone knew books were filthy liars - who knew where that paper had been? - full of suspicious things like facts, but he'd always suspected that those ones where Jesus took his lesser-known form of a talking lion were actually a secret extension of the Bible that only the cool people got to read. After all, if you were the son of God, why wouldn't you take the form of an almighty golden killing machine with awesome hair? That "lions versus Christians" stuff was just a smokescreen by Big History. Eat it, Romans!

Other Stephen smiled at him. (Fight it, Colbert. Fight it. Even if he's you.) "We always knew we'd find that secret entrance to Narnia one day if we kept looking in enough wardrobes," he said.

Yes, and that was the _only_ reason Stephen had accidentally tugged that dress off the hanger and had it fall over his head that one time, _Mom_. She'd only caught him looking at it in the mirror because he was trying to figure out how to take it off, since he'd certainly never had any thoughts about how to wear girl clothes before. (And those shiny black pumps had just happened to be the perfect complement to that racy hemline, okay?)

Those kind of memories made him angry at the knowledge there were sickos out there who liked to dress up in women's clothes, making his mother think a totally innocent dress, lingerie, shoes and make-up accident could have been something perverted. (She'd been totally right to send him to that camp, even so. Couldn't risk the tiniest chance of that sort of infection spreading. Plus he'd learned lots of good techniques for rooting out the things that even _he_ hadn't realised could be gateway drugs to dangerous levels of girliness. No more playing with action figures or helping his mom with the household chores for _this_ healthy heterosexual American!)

He raised a piercing eyebrow. "So why are you really here?" he demanded. "I suppose you're planning to tie me up - say with some of that electrical tape Tad keeps in his office, plus I've got some belts that would make pretty sturdy restraints, and you could probably use my tie as a gag-" he coughed and found his way back to the beginning of the sentence, "...and take over my show? Well, think again! The Nation would sniff you out faster than a..." He drew in a deep breath of his opponent's musky, masculine odour with just a subtle hint of tasteful cologne. "Wow, we really do smell fantastic."

"I know," Other Stephen said, and smiled that crinkle-eyed smile that made Stephen want to do things it was totally not at all gay to want to do to yourself. "I'm not here to steal your audience, Stephen - they'd only laugh at me when they saw my pretence of mimicking your truthiness. No, mostly I just came here so I could do _this_." He ruffled a hand over Stephen's shorn hair, and laughed a little. "Wow, they're right. That really is fuzzy."

No one else had dared do that to Stephen's hair, though he'd felt the ghostly, not-quite there sensation of unseen hands on Other Stephen's; it made him want to purr and push into the touch like a kitten. And since it was himself, he didn't have to ask permission. (Not that he saw why he should have to ask permission to touch people who worked for him anyway - those bodies were company property during working hours! - but the lawyers kept sending him really boring memos about it, and pretending to read them was such a waste of time.)

He nuzzled his forehead against Other Stephen's, and they both giggled. The two of them fit together perfectly and comfortably, none of that usual itchy calculation as he tried to figure out how to get gay enough to prove he was an unintimidated alpha male without getting so gay that it actually got gay. (Mouth to mouth kissing was too far into the gay zone. Learned that one the hard way.) It was like having the twin who would always understand him and not sit on him make him eat worms like his other brothers that he'd secretly asked Santa for when he was twelve.

He guessed Santa was going to have to come off the On Notice board after all. Although maybe not until he ponied up on those rollerskates. (With the _gold_ wheels, Santa!)

"Okay, I've got to go and do my show," Other Stephen said as he drew away, but he was smiling, and Stephen could feel it from the inside. "And they were right. The hair looks fine. It's going to be fine." He must have been reassuring himself there, because _Stephen_ certainly hadn't been up till four a.m. with a crate of Bud Light Lime weeping over the fact he was bald and puffy and had terrible tan lines.

Other Stephen pressed a warm, soft kiss to his cheek before he left, and he felt like a princess. By the time his heart had stopped fluttering and he'd opened his eyes, Other Stephen was already disappearing back through the closet - which just served to demonstrate what Stephen had always suspected deep down.

His ass really _did_ look fantastic in these suits.

#

The portal between their worlds came and went after that. Other Stephen could come through it to Stephen's world when he wanted, but it didn't open for Stephen the other way. (Other Stephen claimed this was something to do with lowering barriers and letting other people's thinking in, but Stephen was certain it was because he was Stephen Prime and the gravity of his gigantic balls was just too great for him to be sucked through into any lesser world. He was the only one who did the ball-sucking round here.)

Other Stephen's in-person visits were erratic, and for a variety of reasons: sometimes he would be bursting with energy and looking for someone to practise a duet or dance routine with, or struggling writing his show and looking for inspiration from Stephen. (Though he never listened when Stephen pointed out that writing it down in the first place was his main mistake - true visionaries freeballed it. Get out there on the high wires and dangle those truth-cherries!) Sometimes he would just show up for no reason at all, with transparently made-up excuses like, "You seemed pretty upset," or, "Maybe you're a little bit drunk to be waving that gun around." Stephen heroically kept him company on those occasions, since the poor guy was obviously depressed by the inferiority of his life to Stephen's.

Despite Stephen's hopes, it was generally too much of a hassle to get Other Stephen to physically substitute for him on set, though he did go and fetch him one time to take over an interview after he found out the Gorillaz had only sent their representatives in place of the real band. This was his show, and he didn't have to put up with that kind of amateur bullshit.

Not long after that interview, Stephen's wife left him. He didn't think too much of it at first. She did it pretty much every spring, after Valentine's Day and their anniversary. It was a migratory thing, like with birds. But just like Stephen Junior, it seemed that this time she'd spread her wings a little too far to find the way back to the nest on her own.

(He wasn't sure what to tell the Nation to stand at the border and flap this time. Flowers? That would probably just attract bees. And with bees you got honey, which attracted bears, so, maybe he was better off just doing without his wife. It wasn't as if he needed her to look after him. He could tell the housekeeper what to do just as easily himself.)

Three weeks later he was down to his last pair of underwear and eating dry cereal out of a shoe. But he still had his pride, and he'd shown that housekeeper that nobody told Stephen Colbert not to lick pots that were still on the stove if he wanted to, and that was the main thing. He could get a new housekeeper any time he felt like it. He was pretty sure you just went down to Mexico and shoved one in the back of a truck or something.

So really, it was completely unnecessary for Other Stephen to pay him a home visit, like he was some sort of grasping welfare queen in need of a teat to suckle from.

"I didn't ask you to come here and shove your teats in my face," he said sourly, without getting up. (He was sitting on the floor by choice. And not because there were things piled on all the chairs and no housekeeper who knew where they were supposed to go. He liked it down here.)

Other Stephen pouted. "And after I went to all that trouble with the nipple tassels, too."

That did cause Stephen's attention to perk up. "You have nipple tassels?" he asked, eyes widening at the mental images. Terrible, awful, not even slightly beguiling mental images.

Other Stephen smiled. "No." He folded his long legs to sit on the floor beside Stephen. "We should probably get some, though, for the show," he said. "In red, white and blue."

Stephen frowned, considering the logistics. "Where would you put the third one?"

Other Stephen snickered and bumped their shoulders together. The contact was actually kind of nice, and his smile was soft as he looked sideways at Stephen. He reached out toward the stubble on Stephen's cheek. "Wow, that comes through really grey when we don't shave." He brushed his thumb over it consideringly. "Always wondered if it was really as prickly as-"

Stephen grabbed him by the collar and kissed him.

Other Stephen's lips were soft and welcoming, but he kissed back with a sort of friendly curiosity, none of the _hunger_ Stephen always felt. Of all the ways they'd turned out to be different, this might be the one that stung the most. Stephen went to shove him away, but Other Stephen wouldn't let him, keeping a grip on his shoulders as he gentled the kiss until he drew away and rested his forehead against Stephen's.

"Well. _That_ was a little narcissistic," he said with a chuckle, but there was no cruelty in the sound. Being laughed at was a nice thing in Other Stephen's world; Stephen had to remember that. They sat like that for a few moments, then Other Stephen got back to his feet, rubbing a hand over Stephen's shoulders as he rose. "Right. Let's see about getting this place cleaned up a little," he said.

Stephen remained on the floor, rebellious. This sounded suspiciously like the lead-in to his wife's favourite underhand tactics, where instead of the natural division of labour of him directing from the armchair in front of the TV while she used her innate womanly cleaning skills, she kept trying to hand him incomprehensible items like dusters and expecting him to know what to do with them. (If cleaning supplies weren't meant for only women to use, then why would there be an aisle in the drug store labelled Feminine Hygiene Products? He didn't make the rules, Lorraine.)

"I don't do menial work," he said. "What will the poor have to strive for if I take away their chance to wax my ivory toothpick holder and fluff my angora liquor bottle covers?" He was single-handedly giving them a reason not to become crack-whores. And God knew that the crack-whore lifestyle was a constant temptation to battle against. He had to remind himself constantly of his own reasons not to become one. (Whatever those were... No, no, fight it. Stay strong.)

"All right, then, how about you go take a shower, and I'll call someone to take care of things here for you," Other Stephen suggested.

Well, obviously, Stephen was perfectly capable of taking care of things all by himself without needing any outside help. On the other hand, he reasoned, Other Stephen was _him_ , and so really, Stephen was still the one taking care of this. In fact, he was helping himself, which was what America was all about!

Plus he _was_ overdue for his third shower of the day. At this rate he was barely going to have time to fit in his wax and tweeze routine, and how could he possibly show his face in the restroom at Applebee's with an untidy bikini line? (Not that he ever showed his face. It wasn't gay if the other guy couldn't be sure you were a man. That was just technically classified as a wacky misunderstanding.) Besides, that kiwi and passionfruit body scrub he'd bought for his wife wasn't going to use itself up. Especially not all the extra bottles that he'd bought since she left.

Of course, unscheduled showers usually meant he was taking some private time for a good cry or... the thing that he and God had come to an agreement about (thanks, God!) so it was surely just habit that he was kind of in the mood for both right now. Well, that and the fact he could hardly be expected to help himself considering Other Stephen was, naturally, _really_ handsome, and he smelled so nice, and his hair was so fluffy. (Plus Stephen reasoned that God would be _extra_ understanding this time, since if you were doing things to yourself to avoid the urge to do things to yourself, that cancelled out and you weren't doing anything.)

So he was feeling much more relaxed when he descended the stairs sometime later, dressed in a fresh suit and trying to stop licking his own skin. (It wasn't his fault. He just smelled so delicious and kiwi fruit-y.) But still, licking himself was much better than licking... himself...

Okay, maybe he was going to need another shower.

Before he could turn round, Other Stephen bounced out to greet him, flaunting his cheerful handsomeness all over the place without a trace of shame. "Okay, Jon's on his way," he said.

"You called Jon?" he said, betrayed. Jon was coming to his _house_? While his wife wasn't here? "He- he'll take advantage of me! Throw me over his shoulder and carry me off to the bedroom kicking and screaming!" (Well, obviously not kicking too hard. He wouldn't want Jon to actually drop him.) "And then he'll have to gag me, and once I'm gagged he'll have to tie my hands to stop me undoing the gag, and then he'll tie me to the bed to stop me escaping..." And then he'd pull all kinds of terrible filthy things out of that bag that he kept in his office that he _claimed_ was just for a change of clothes. (And why are you keeping a change of clothes at the office anyway, _Jon_? Could it be that you need to cover up _the stink of sin_?)

Stephen trembled. "That man is a predator! The first hint of weakness and he'll be on me like a feral beast!"

Jon was always prowling around him, inviting Stephen into his den of iniquity - AKA 'office' - and making all those smutty innuendos. Comments like, "Do you want to grab something to eat?" or, "Why don't you just use my pen?" or, "I don't want you keeping that gun in your pants at work, Stephen." Well, Stephen was wise to his filthy little games.

"I'm sure you and Jon will be fine," Other Stephen said. "He's only feral if you get to him before coffee. Then he's like some kind of grizzly mountain man." He shuddered.

Stephen was briefly lost in imaginings of bringing feral mountain man Jon home to his cabin and nursing him back to health, but snapped out of it as the rest of that statement sank in. "Wait, you're leaving me alone with him?" he wailed.

"I'm not sure your Jon would be quite ready to handle two of us at once," Other Stephen pointed out.

_That_ mental image stopped him in his tracks for long enough for Other Stephen to make his escape and head back up the stairs. Stephen chased him back to the bedroom in time to see him disappearing through the mirrored doors of the closet and into the portal beyond.

"Take me with you to your world!" he begged. He had to get out of here. Jon would take one look at the state of the house and use his commanding voice to make Stephen clean it up, like that time in Stephen's old Daily Show office after the milkshake fight. (Which had been entirely Steve's fault - he was the one who'd been standing there being so _wrong_ about everything while Stephen had that milkshake in his hand.)

He knew exactly how that slippery slope went. You let a man start ordering you to do things like throw that week-old taco in the trash and stop drinking pancake syrup from the bottle (mmm, taste that diabetes), and then the next thing you knew you were face down and chained to a bedpost, wearing nothing but a leather collar, a thong, and a pair of nipple clamps. He'd seen those PSA videos on the internet! And he made a point of rewatching them on a regular basis to keep himself alert to the dangers.

He dived after Other Stephen, but the portal was gone. "Come back!" he demanded.

The mental sensation he received in return felt like a ghostly squeeze. _Jon will take care of you,_ Other Stephen said.

His mind was filled with dire visions of Jon doing just that. He hammered on the inside wall of the closet for a while. "Come back! You can't leave me alone at the mercy of that man's non-stop sexual harassment - I barely made it out of the Daily Show at the end of every day with my clothes intact! If he finds me here, he'll, he'll-"

He was so overcome with the visions of things Jon might do to him that he didn't realise at first that the voice calling his name from downstairs was actually real. He shrank down in the bottom of the closet as Jon mounted the stairs. Yeah, mounted them like he wanted to mount some _other_ things around here. Well, Jon couldn't get to him in here. He just had to stay cool, keep silent, pretend there was nobody home...

"Stephen?" Jon's voice came from out on the landing.

"Stephen's not here!" he blurted in a panic, and then clapped a hand over his mouth. Would Jon buy that? Maybe he'd buy that.

Instead there was the creak of the bedroom door as Jon came in. "Stephen, are you... in the closet?" he asked quizzically after a moment.

Stephen jumped to his feet, outraged. "How dare you!" he shouted through the door. "Just because my wife left me and I accidentally ate that baby carrot and I just like to feel pretty sometimes is no reason to imply-"

There was a somewhat pointed knock on the outside of the closet door.

Stephen deflated a little as he realised that he might have slightly misunderstood. "Oh. Yes. I am... in here," he admitted.

Jon was wearing a concerned look as he opened the door. "Your wife left you?" he said.

Who'd told him that? Had Other Stephen told him that? Traitor! And anyway, it wasn't true. "She's left me... alone, while she goes on vacation with the kids," he said quickly. "Gets them out from under my feet! I'm doing important work for the future of the nation - I don't need them hassling me with their constant, 'Daddy, Daddy, will you tell us the story of how you saved President Bush from the anti-Christmas jihad again?', 'Daddy, Daddy, do we have to have Doritos for dinner again?', 'Daddy, Daddy, we love you...'" His gaze fell on the empty hangers where his wife's clothes had once hung, and he abruptly burst into tears.

"She's gone, Jon!" he wailed, stumbling out of the closet and clutching hold of Jon's shirt. "Gone, and this time she took all her clothes with her - even that little black party dress that I always thought would look fantastic with my hips." He shook Jon by his lapels. "Do you _know_ how hard it is to find clothes that flatter my hips, Jon?" He sank down to the floor in misery. "Oh, God, that's why she left me, isn't it? Because I'm fat! I'm fat and I'm old and disgusting. Even I don't want to sleep with me!"

Jon sat down rather awkwardly beside him. "That's... not true, Stephen," he said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He raised his head. "It's not?"

"No. You look..." he shrugged, "you look great, Stephen." He gave a little chuckle. "Much better than me, that's for sure."

"That's pretty good," Stephen conceded. Because Jon looked really...

... _kissable_ , a little voice whispered at the back of his mind.

A little voice that _had_ to be Other Stephen's, because he would _never_ think something like that. He jumped up in defiance, shaking his head. "No! Stop thrusting your gay agenda in my face. Did you think I would just swoon into your manly, muscular arms? I escaped you, Stewart! I clawed my way out of that hellpit of harassment and dope-smoking liberal propaganda at your so-called Daily so-called Show. And now you follow me home like a stalker, expecting I'll put out like one of your little groupies at your office orgies?" He slapped the side of his ass for emphasis. "This body is not your plaything, Jon! You can't just show up and expect to ride me like a pony any time you please!"

Well. Not without a riding crop, anyway. And he was fairly sure Jon didn't have one of those stashed anywhere in those sinfully well-fitted pants - although maybe he should pat him down, just to be sure.

Jon fell back on his usual tired defence, putting on that earnestly confused expression as if he didn't know _exactly_ what Stephen was talking about. "Stephen, you just called me and asked me to come over," he said.

"And you mistook that impostor on the phone for me?" he said indignantly. "Some stalker you are, _Jon_." What did a man have to do to get some quality victimisation around here, cover himself in whipped cream and handcuff himself to the bed? "That wasn't me, it was that guy." He pointed at the mirror on the closet door. "Can't trust that guy," he warned. "I, for one, never take my eyes off him whenever there's a mirror in the room."

"Right. Ookay. Uh, Stephen, did you maybe need some help getting this place sorted out?" Jon said, looking around at the drifts of half opened packets of tube socks that littered the bedroom. (Look, he had to keep buying new ones, what else was he going to do, wear the same pair _twice_?)

Show no weakness, show no weakness... He flung himself at Jon and clutched the leg of his pants. "Jon, I'm living in a state of lawless anarchy!" he admitted. "Cats and dogs living together - I caught the cat and the dog living together, in some sort of unholy basket-sharing alliance. What if they have puppens? I'm not equipped to be a single grandfather to children of a mixed marriage!" (Although boy, would they be cute.) "And nothing _works_ anymore," he added in a wail. "No matter how often I close and reopen the freezer, it doesn't refill with AmeriCone Dream! I keep pushing the button for the dishwasher, but Carlos never shows up! And when I throw clothes in the hamper they're _still there the next morning_!"

His wife must have sabotaged everything when she'd left. He hadn't known that she could be so cruel. (Though admittedly, the part where she'd threatened to remove his balls with his limited edition Bud Light Lime bottle opener could have been a clue.)

Jon looked a little dazed by that stream of information - as well anyone might, when faced with such an account of unendurable hardship. Any lesser man than Stephen would have been curled up in a corner whimpering by now. (That brief session after he ran out of wrinkle cream didn't count. No man should be expected to live without a vital cornerstone of his nightly skincare routine.)

"Okay, uh, well... maybe we should just start by getting you your housekeeper back," Jon suggested.

#

Jon managed to secure Consuela's services again (he'd sounded suspiciously apologetic on the phone when he was supposed to be making her beg for her job back, but then, he'd always been good at making it look innocent to outsiders when he forced _Stephen_ to jump through his cruel hoops, so Stephen figured that might not mean much) and wrote him out a list of arcane rules for operating the mysterious devices in the kitchen. (Damn liberal scientists and their anti-spoon-microwaving agenda - how else was he supposed to get it to the ideal ice-cream scooping temperature?)

When that was done, they dined on takeout pizza. Stephen was heartened to see Jon didn't dare try any funny business with the last slice this time around. Even though he hovered his hand over it for several minutes just to see if he could bait the predator into revealing himself.

Jon was obviously angling for an invitation to stay longer ("Sorry, Stephen, but I really have to go now?" Please.) but Stephen stood firm in the face of those adorable puppy dog eyes and showed him the door. He wasn't the slightest bit lonely all by himself in the big house after Jon had gone home, and he took his eagle plushy to bed with him so he'd have a witness to prove it.

He was reliving the wholesome heterosexual memory of Jon's parting hand on his shoulder when Other Stephen spoke up in his head again. _Can I talk to you now, or are you gonna yell at me again?_

_You interrupted me when I was polishing my Emmy!_ he defended himself.

_I'm sorry. I know you like to do that after you've seen Jon._

Stephen gave a mental hmph and turned over in bed to face the mirror. He didn't really need it to speak to Other Stephen anymore, but it helped to make it feel like Other Stephen was really actually there instead of just a voice in his head. Not that Stephen needed anybody there.

_You had no right to invite Jon over like that,_ he insisted. Not when Stephen was... Well, Stephen wasn't _ever_ vulnerable. He was just deprived of certain necessities of life right now, and it was a dirty underhanded trick to send Jon over to play the role of beguiling temptress. No matter how good he might look in a belly-dance costume.

_But you had a nice time, right?_ Other Stephen said.

Stephen was briefly lost in recollections of giggling over pizza - like a slumber party! - before he shook himself. _Don't talk to me like I'm a_ child _!_ he said, and squeezed the eagle plushy to the chest of his stars and stripes footie pyjamas indignantly. (So snuggly! So patriotic.)

There was a pause.

_You're right. I'm sorry,_ Other Stephen said. _I just worry about you, being on your own._

_I'm not on my own. I'm_ married, Stephen reminded him. _My wife's gonna come crawling back any day now._ And he would graciously forgive her despite her terrible betrayal, which would make her so grateful she'd promise never to leave him again, and-

He felt Other Stephen sigh, which made his own chest feel funny, sort of... tight and choked up. _Definitely_ Other Stephen's influence. And so were the burning eyes. And the uncontrollable lip-wobble.

_Stephen, I'm pretty sure that this time she's not-_

Stephen launched into a furious rendition of "The King of Glory", which he'd been meaning to practise. He couldn't remember any of the lyrics outside of the chorus, but by the time he finally ran out of breath after the twentieth repetition, Other Stephen had given up and gone away.

Or rather, slunk away in shame at being so self-evidently _wrong_. Stephen hugged the eagle and daydreamed of waking up the next morning looking into his wife's pretty blue eyes... Were they blue? Oh, well. It was her own fault if she'd abandoned him for so long he'd forgotten what she looked like. So he'd just have to picture her with blue eyes, and soft silky grey hair, and broad, strong shoulders... muscular arms, wrapping close around him from behind...

He drifted off to sleep.

#

But Other Stephen wasn't quite so easy to put off. It seemed like he was there in Stephen's head all the time after that, constantly pushing his pro-Jon agenda. Jon, Jon, Jon. _Why don't you invite Jon over again? Jon's probably still at the office, maybe you should go over there. I'm sure Jon would be willing to eat lunch with you..._ It was like he'd taken those one or two isolated incidents (definitely no more than three or four, anyway) of Stephen curling up under the desk in his office wailing, "Why doesn't anyone love me?" as a sign that he was lonely.

It was all starting to sound suspiciously like the _gay_ agenda, frankly. Especially that thing with the whipped cream, which even Other Stephen was too ashamed to admit to had been his thought. (As if there was any other way those kinds of images could have ended up in Stephen's head. He would _definitely_ never have thought of that bit with the cherries. Let alone the banana.)

A man could only take so much! If Other Stephen kept on at him like this, he might snap and do something terrible, like _actually_ go out to dinner with Jon. What if there were candles and violin players? What if Jon called him "principessa"? Without his wife around, he was like an animal separated from the rest of the herd, easy prey to be seduced and ravished. And Other Stephen was actively working together with Jon, playing the role of the beater (or was it "fluffer"?) and trying to flush Stephen out of the underbrush into the predator's path.

"If you like Jon so much, why don't _you_ go to dinner with him?" he demanded.

"Maybe I will," Other Stephen said through the dressing room mirror.

Stephen jolted. "You can't!" Other Stephen already had his own Jon on his side of the mirror. He wasn't allowed to steal Stephen's too.

"Well, if you don't want to spend time with him-"

"That doesn't mean that you can!" This was like that heinous kindergarten 'sharing' conspiracy all over again. Well, he'd seen off _that_ attack on his civil rights, and he was sure a vicious thwack with a wooden truck would put paid to this one too. The wheels on those things could really sting.

A rare knock on the dressing room door interrupted before he could threaten Other Stephen with the terrible menace of shin-bruises.

"Uh, Stephen, are you okay in there?" Tad asked through the door. Stephen shot a dark warning glare at his duplicate in the mirror before he opened it. "I heard shouting..." He nervously tried to crane past Stephen to see into the room.

Stephen pointed at the mirror. "Don't let that guy near you," he warned. "He's a filthy seducer and he can't be trusted." He leaned in to speak in low tones. "I think he's in the pay of the gay agenda. He keeps trying to make me go out on dates with hot men."

"Okay," Tad squeaked, looking a little uncomfortable; probably frozen with horror at being this close to that kind of threat even with Stephen here to protect him. "Um... I won't?"

"Good man." Stephen gave him a manly pat on the backside. "Now don't knock again, no matter what kind of noises you hear from inside here - I may have to give myself a pretty thorough thrashing to stop all of these gay thoughts from invading my mind."

Tad fled without further prompting. Obedient guy. That was why they had such a good working relationship.

"And get me a wooden truck!" Stephen called after him. "One with big wheels!"

#

Despite his best efforts to head off the outrageous assault on what was his, the thought of Other Stephen's interest in Jon festered. It wasn't fair! Other Stephen already had his own Jon. _And_ a wife. Why did he need to go after Stephen's Jon as well? That was just greedy.

Stephen briefly considered what kind of activities his double could be getting up to that would require two Jons. Then he had to go and take a cold shower, because those mental images made him so angry they gave him a hot flush that made him tingle all over. Maybe Stephen should steal _his_ Jon, see how he liked it. Then he would be the one who had two Jons, and he could - oh, that angry flush was back.

The only problem was, he couldn't get in and steal Other Stephen's Jon first, because he still couldn't create a portal from his side. (And he didn't trust all that "try to get inside my head" advice Other Stephen had spouted about it. Trying to understand what other people were thinking was the first step down that slippery slope toward compromise, and its even dirtier cousin, bipartisanship. It even had "bi" in the name - all the proof you needed of deviancy. That was why Stephen only rode a unicycle.)

He might not be able to make his own portals, but he could still tell when Other Stephen had come through one. All right, admittedly, it had taken until twenty-two points into the mental memo he was dictating for him to realise there was no response from Other Stephen's side of their connection, but he'd been distracted by the importance of the material he was outlining. Those wings of the Stephen Colbert Patriot-a-palooza Museum of All-American Snack Foods weren't going to name themselves.

He knew he had to get over to the Daily Show studio at once before Other Stephen molested his Jon. Or Jon molested Other Stephen? They could be over there, molesting each other right now, and he wasn't there to thrust his body in between them! He didn't even wait for his driver, but sprinted all the way across to the other studio. (Well, part of the way. He got a little dehydrated by the time he reached the end of the hallway and had to stop for a breather and a cool, refreshing gargle of some Nutz. And then he decided it was best to pace himself and avoid the risk of damage to his oh-so-vulnerable wrists. Or his hairstyle. But once he reached the Daily Show building he broke back into a sprint.)

Stephen flung the door to Jon's office open dramatically. Unfortunately, they weren't in there, so he had to go through the building flinging doors until he found them in one of the conference rooms, sharing Chinese food _from the same box_.

"You hussy!" he shouted, outraged. "How could you? All those nights you said you were working late! The new clothes, those sweet nothings you whispered in my ear... I can smell the stink of guilt all over you!" Also _Stephen Colbert's Limited Edition "Success" Cologne (Disclaimer: May Contain a Non-Zero Amount of Formula 401)_. Though that could have been from him. Did tend to drown out everything else.

Jon leaned slightly sideways towards Other Stephen, a chunk of chicken still held frozen in his chopsticks. "Is he talking to you or to me?" he asked.

"Don't try to play innocent!" Stephen said. "I caught the two of you red-handed, canoodling!" Which sounded like something you did in a canoe with a poodle, and if that kind of thing wasn't sinful, he didn't know what was.

Jon glanced sideways at Other Stephen. "Uh, we were just talking," he said a little helplessly. "Your alternate universe double is an interesting guy."

Stephen kept up a manfully brave face as his heart froze and shattered in his chest. "Oh, so that's your plan!" he barked at Other Stephen. "Lure him back to your little love-nest of an alternate universe by being _interesting_. Why not just hand out your poisoned candy from the back of a black van with tinted windows?"

Jon just looked confused, but Other Stephen always understood what he was talking about. "I'm not trying to steal your Jon from you, Stephen," he said.

"Of course you are!" Stephen knew _exactly_ what kind of filthy things Other Stephen got up to into his own universe - he could feel the ghost of them when their minds were connected. "You _kissed_ your Jon."

Jon blinked at Other Stephen a little. "You, uh, you kissed... your Jon?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

Other Stephen laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward to press a kiss against his cheek in demonstration, smiling warmly as he sat back again. Stephen could swear that Jon blushed slightly.

He snatched Jon away from Other Stephen before he could do any more damage. "Get off of him! He doesn't want you slobbering away at him like that, you pervert!" What if Jon thought _Stephen_ wanted to do those kinds of disgusting things to him? He'd never talk to Stephen again and it would be all his duplicate's fault.

"Um, actually, Stephen, I don't really mind," Jon told him.

Stephen stared at him, still gripping the sleeve of Jon's suit jacket. "You don't mind?" he asked, feeling his eyes go wide. His hand slipped down Jon's arm entirely of its own accord to find Jon's hand and squeeze it.

Jon didn't seem to mind the hand-holding, either. "No, I think it's nice," he said.

"Oh."

Stephen should probably yell at him for giving in to the gay agenda and shove him away before he was infected too, but Jon was smiling a little bit, and he still hadn't tried to let go, and Stephen was finding it really hard to think about anything apart from how warm his hand was and how blue his eyes were. He thought Other Stephen might actually have left the room at some point, but he wasn't really paying attention to that.

Until a terrible suspicion dawned, and he stepped back, wrapping his arms protectively across his middle. "Do you like _him_ better than me?" he demanded. Of course he would. Other Stephen was casual and touchy-feely and he laughed a lot and Stephen was a tiny bit suspicious he was secretly a liberal, and of _course_ Jon would like him more than Stephen, he _was_ Stephen, only _better_ , and-

"I... barely even had a chance to meet him," Jon said with a shrug. "I mean, he seemed like a great guy..."

Stephen reeled back, covering his eyes with his forearm. "Oh, just thrust the dagger into my heart, why don't you?" he begged. "Get it over with."

Jon sighed. "Stephen, I don't... Yes, I liked him. I think probably if I got to know him, I'd like him a lot." Stephen whimpered. Jon stepped forward and gently drew his arm away from where it was covering his face, clasping both of Stephen's hands in his own. "But not better," he promised earnestly. "Differently."

"Differently how?" Stephen asked warily, eyebrow beginning to rise.

Jon smiled up at him. "Well," he said. "Definitely not like this." He wrapped his arms around the back of Stephen's neck and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. Stephen froze rigid until Jon started to hesitantly draw back, and then he shoved him up against the edge of the conference table and kissed him furiously.

Jon didn't seem to mind _that_ , either. Somewhere in the back of his mind he thought he could already hear Other Stephen laughing in amused delight.

But maybe it was just _him_ who was that happy.

* * *

**Five Years Later...**

For an off-the-grid cabin in the woods, this place sure got a lot of foot traffic. At the sound of yet another knock on the door, Stephen scrambled to grab his sword and Captain America's shield from behind the bed.

"Stephen, if you run off another mailman with that thing, we're never going to get that kale delivery," Jon said as he stood back to sip his beer. He was still in his saggy old robe; when they stayed at the cabin he rarely bothered to get fully dressed, a habit Stephen thoroughly approved.

But there had to be some standards. "Jon, you never know when it might be a marauding liberal pundit who's been training night and day to take me on and steal the secret of my immortality," he pointed out. After all, nobody had seen Olbermann for a while. "I have to be ready to leap into action and tackle any situation that comes up, no matter how extreme." He contemplated his sword and shield. "Now, could you get the door for me? My hands are full."

Jon opened the door to reveal a man in a baseball cap with a thick white beard. "Santa?" Stephen said eagerly. It was early, but that could be why Santa was travelling incognito - and he'd been a _very_ good boy this year.

But when the man lifted his cap, Stephen found it was like looking in a full-length mirror - something this cabin didn't have, which was probably why this particular visitor had to come to the front door.

"Boy, you got _old_ ," Stephen said.

"Well, we can't all be immortal," Other Stephen said. He rubbed his thicket of chin-fur. "This is just my hiatus beard," he explained. "I'll be shaving it off in the fall when I start my new show."

"I'm gonna grow me one of those when I officially retire," Jon said, taking a sip of his beer.

Stephen too had let his standards relax since he'd finished with the Colbert Report - these days he sometimes went as long as six weeks between waxes, and his pedicures were down to twice a month. (Jon had suggested he reduce his shower routine too now they were reliant on the cabin's limited water supply, but really, they weren't animals. And anyway, Jon complained less when he was allowed to share.)

"You don't miss it?" Other Stephen asked.

The daily grind? The beautiful people? The daily grinding of beautiful people? For a moment Stephen was wistful... but no. He raised his chin. "I led my great Nation for over nine long years, left nobody who visited my studio untouched - Jon, remind me to send that letter of apology to Doris Kearns Goodwin - and now they stand on the precipice of a new age. I'm confident they can move forward without me." He met Other Stephen's eyes. "After absorbing the output of my gut for all those years, they no longer need me - and neither do you."

Or maybe the truth was that _Stephen_ didn't need them to need _him_ anymore.

"Maybe not," Other Stephen said. "But I think I might still want to visit, now and then." His smile was warm, and they stepped forward into a tight, lingering hug. Stephen brought his lips close to Other Stephen's good ear so he could speak without Jon overhearing them.

"Seriously. Shave that thing," he said. "It feels like it's trying to mate with my face." Other Stephen laughed as he drew back.

He stayed for a few hours, and admired the cabin and Jon's plans for their self-sufficient lifestyle. (And most of all Stephen's diorama of Lord of the Rings movie action figures. Immortality did give you a lot of free time.) When he left, they could hear him humming "We'll Meet Again" all the way back down the forest trail.

After he was gone, Jon rested his head on Stephen's shoulder and looked up at him. "I like you," he said reflectively.

"So do I," Stephen said.

And kissed him, just because he could.


End file.
